 | | |
| | |
|
Spaces home  Campaign TalesPhotosProfileFriendsMore |  Tools   |
Campaign TalesA British view of the US Election
Blogs and sites about the presidential election
|
August 27 Hillary Clinton delivers speech of her political life
Hillary Clinton just took a mammoth, icy bucket of water and a large baseball bat to the heads of the significant proportion of her supporters who are contemplating voting for John McCain or not voting at all. As she officially passed the legacy of her campaign to Obama, she said, "I haven't spent the past 35 years in the trenches advocating for children, campaigning for universal healthcare, helping parents balance work and family and fighting for women's rights here at home and around the world to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise of a country that really fulfils the hopes of our people, and you haven't worked so hard over the last 18 months or endured the last 8 years to suffer through more faild leadership. No way, no how, no McCain. Barack Obama is my candidate and he must be our president." She thereby turned any Democrat so embittered by her loss to Obama into the biggest scrooge in their party's political history if they let their feelings get in the way of their vote. She posed the rhetorical question of her supporters that some of her more cynical critics have often asked of her: "Were you in this campaign just for me?" Or were they in it for the single parent on a minimum wage, the cancer sufferer who painted Hillary's name on her bald head and their own children. "We are on the same team and none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines." McCain, who has blasting the airwaves with ads featuring re-runs of Clinton's criticisms of Obama during the race for the Democratic nomination, lost no time. It placed an ad in the break on CNN immediately after she spoke. (Click on the ad at http://www.johnmccain.com/Home2.htm and it comes up after the Democrat saying she's for McCain.) An urgent voice says, "She won millions of votes but isn't in his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth ... The truth hurt and Obama didn't like it." Up until now it's been kind of hard to stay focused on the affair with all the silly hats and eruptions of bad dancing from the audience getting down to "I'm so excited" or other bad disco moments. There were a couple of other highlights, including Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania's serving of red meat - McCain is not the maverick he claims to be, but a "sidekick" to President Bush. But it was Hillary's night, and Obama's by extension, who will have a tough act to follow when he delivers his acceptance speech on Thursday, after Bill Clinton makes his remarks on Wednesday. Many of the supporters considering backing McCain or sitting the election out are women, and Clinton made it clear they had a lot to lose if McCain, who opposes abortion rights, wins. Someone at flickr.com snapped an image of one of the more imaginative pieces of election paraphernalia that tried to make the same point. (Obama, who is trying to win over religious voters who make up a huge proportion of voting Americans, has to tread carefully on this topic. It was not for nothing that Casey, an anti-abortion Democrat born in the same town as Obama's running mate Joe Biden, who is pro-choice, was chosen to address the crowd before Clinton.) Read MSN's election special at http://news.uk.msn.com/us-presidential-elections.aspx
August 26 Out with the old, in with the new as Dems anoint Obama Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter didn't even merit a speech at the opening night of the Democratic convention. The Clintons were nowhere to be seen. The fresh-faced Congressman Jesse Jackson Junior rather than his more gnarled, civil rights-era father of the same name, drew the first parallels with Martin Luther King and declared Obama "a leader who can heal the wounds of the last eight years". Caroline Kennedy, reportedly instrumental in securing the monumental endorsement of her uncle Edward Kennedy for Obama, movingly drew the connection between her father John F. Kennedy and Obama, saying "I've never had someone inspire me the way people tell me my father inspired them, but I do now." A lengthy video tribute to Teddy Kennedy, who is being treated for brain cancer, lent Obama some historical gravitas and no doubt won him a few crucial Irish Catholic votes too. Then the cancer-stricken Kennedy himself appeared before a sea of "Kennedy" placards, a little grayer and frailer than before, but sending the crowd wild with a message that looked forward rather than backward. "Barack Obama will close the book on the old politics of race and gender and group against group and state against state. Barack Obama will be a commander in chief who understands that young Americans in uniform must never be committed to a mistake but always to a mission worthy of their bravery." Then in came Michelle Obama, sending the crowd into tearful paroxysms with her story of growing up poor on the south side of Chicago and how she met Obama at a law firm before they both went into more community-minded careers. She also gave Hillary Clinton her moment of the night, quoting her line about how she put "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling - the number of votes she won in the race for the nomination that she lost so narrowly to Obama. The would-be First Lady's key moment came when she defined what brought them all together as "the simple belief that the world as it is just won't do, that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be." That she said, was "the thread that connects our hearts... the thread that runs through my journey and Obama's journey... where the current of history meets this new tide of hope." The punchline, that this was why she was so proud of her country, attempted to undo the damage of her infamous comment in February, about how she had never before been proud of her country as she was to see her husband grow more popular. But the highlight of the night was undoubtedly the exchange between Obama himself, who suddenly appeared from the campaign trail by video linkup, with his wife and their two daughters Malia, 10 and Sasha, 7, who stole the show by ignoring all the rules and demanding to know exactly where their father was. The unscripted lines of his daughters could give Obama the biggest bump in the polls he's had since defeating Hillary Clinton, one he could certainly use. Read MSN's special election coverage at http://news.uk.msn.com/us-presidential-elections.aspx
August 23 Best kept secret is out - Obama-Biden is the ticket Obama scores points just for having managed to keep a lid for so long on his choice of running mate, which he announced by posting the above image at his website overnight. The network commentators all but hyperventilated late on Friday as they picked through the paltry evidence supplied by reporters posted outside the homes of the short list. As you will read on this liberal discussion board, even movements of private planes in and out of Biden's home in the tiny state of Delaware were studied for signs he might be headed for Springfield, Illinois, after Obama said he would appear with his choice for the vice presidential role this morning. In Washington, it is virtually impossible to keep such a secret. The lack of a leak showed a rare amount of discipline on Obama's part; even Biden's senior staff didn't know the news late on Friday night. But the Associated Press in this analysis also drew the obvious conclusion that Obama's choice was a break with his message of change - Biden, while an outspoken critic of the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq war, is a consummate Washington insider who has served in the Senate for 35 years. As for helping Obama win states in November, Biden's geographical profile is hardly stellar - Delaware, which was the first state to ratify the constitution, is otherwise primarily known as the home of credit card companies and Dupont, the manufacturer of lycra. Having said that Biden was born in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that will be crucial in November. Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has twice run for president so is better known than many of his colleagues, and many of his ads have appeared in Pennsylvania, which borders Delaware. He commutes by train from Washington to his home, where his wife is a schoolteacher, a fact Obama will no doubt highlight at the upcoming Democratic convention as a contrast with John McCain, who recently confessed to not knowing how many houses he owned. And Biden's personal story is likely to resonate. His first wife Neilia and their baby daughter Amy were killed in a car crash five weeks after Biden won his Senate seat, in 1972. Persuaded by a fellow Democrat to take the seat anyway, Biden has since remarried and had another child and kept his promise to return every day to Delaware to his family, by train. His lowest moment politically was in 1987, when he pulled out of the 1988 presidential race over charges of plagiarism, including a speech by Neil Kinnock. But he is now a national voice on foreign policy, notably because of a plan he devised with foreign policy heavyweight Les Gelb to pacify Iraq. Read MSN's election special here.
August 20 Obama surfs into choppy waters
This has been John McCain's month so far. He thrashed Obama in this discussion hosted by the highly popular Rick Warren, an event that reminded everyone Obama backs abortion rights and reassured conservatives that while McCain might be rather centrist for their taste, at least he believes life begins at conception. The crisis in Georgia unfolded while Obama was surfing in Hawaii, boosting McCain's commander-in-chief credentials. And in this Reuters/Zogby poll released today, McCain leapt five points ahead of Obama and established a nine-point lead on the economy, the issue voters place at the head of their list of concerns. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. A year ago Hillary Clinton had an apparently unassailable, 22-point lead over Obama in a national poll. That survey went the way of many in its category, which in America's state-by-state, all-or-nothing electoral college system, particularly in an election year where many new voters have been registered, are a rather unreliable barometer. ("National polls may go up and down before people actually start voting, but their irrelevance will not," Obama's spokesman said of that poll at the time.) Obama could yet finish August with a smile on his face. He plans to campaign with his yet-to-be-named running mate on Saturday, presumably reclaiming some of the support the Reuters/Zogby poll showed he lost this month among Democrats, only 74 percent of whom said they would vote for him, nine points fewer than a month ago. The Democratic nominating convention in Denver next week hands him several days of free airtime. And McCain won't reclaim the limelight until August 29, his 72nd birthday, when he is expected to announce his running mate. It is unclear how much more of a boost he can expect, given that the poll also showed he already has the support of 81 percent of Republicans. The decision could prove crucial for Obama, who is fighting impressions he might be too young and inexperienced for the job. In this election, McCain wins points for his life history, which included brutal treatment as a prisoner-of-war. Meanwhile Obama's chief life lesson, which he dwells on in his memoirs and was prompted to recall in the interview with Pastor Warren, involved overcoming the rather more familiar weaknesses of youth - drugs and alcohol. So if the old adage about familiarity and contempt holds true, Obama is in trouble. And if the following debate on Fox News is any guide, the gloves are off as far as Republicans are concerned. Fasten your seatbelt. You are about to witness a vicious battle between Democratic and Republican commentators. The Republicans revive talk of Obama's past votes on abortion issues, prompting a Democratic guest to accuse them of calling Obama a babykiller.
Read MSN's election special at http://news.uk.msn.com/us-presidential-elections.aspx
August 13 A plague on Obama's speech?
It seems God frowned upon this socially conservative group's prayer for biblical volumes of rain to fall upon Barack Obama when he accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president in Denver, Colorado later this month. According to The Gazette in Colorado Springs, the group called Focus on the Family Action withdrew the video below, starring its director of digital media Stuart Shepherd, after his suggestion that anti-abortion Christians ask God to send heavenly downpours on Obama's head prompted others in his organization to complain. Shepherd was apparently trying to draw attention to what he says is Obama's unclear position on abortion and gay marriage. He says he was trying to be funny. Perhaps Obama will turn up at the convention with an umbrella but I doubt it. The video drew quite a following on the Internet before it was withdrawn and will presumably draw even more now it's been reincarnated. Of course the real question is whether Obama can succeed in drawing voters from the Christian right with his evangelistic message of hope, without falling entirely in line with its pro-life, anti-gay marriage world view. And that remains to be seen. With the polls showing a tight race between Obama and McCain, the Democrat is now openly wooing Republicans with a new organization called Republicans for Obama, featuring some natty images of the candidate. This is my favourite. Unfortunately the website has instantly become a venue for unappetizing post-mortems of the Clinton campaign, fuelled by The Atlantic's procurement of internal campaign memos that reveal some of the in-fighting that took place there. Perhaps it helps Obama by drawing attention away from the recent revelations about the extra-marital activities of John Edwards, who finished third in the race for the nomination and had been mentioned as a possible running mate for Obama. But while the comments on the Clinton campaign memos might make Obama look good, they scarcely qualify as good PR for Democrats in general. Equally troubling for some is the observation by Howard Wolfson, Clintons' former communications director who is now a commentator at Fox News, that his old boss might have won the nomination had Edwards come clean about his affair earlier and dropped out of the race. Not a comment that is likely to build support for Obama. And not necessarily true, at least not according to the analysis of the University of Iowa. You can read what Wolfson has to say about it all here. Read MSN's special report on the U.S. elections here.
August 06 Hillary and Barack join hands, Paris Hilton spoofs McCainAll aboard! The Hillary-Barack love train is about to set off, as the New York Senator sets dates to campaign solo for the first time on her former rival's behalf. No doubt the tickets will not be cheap, given the size of her campaign debt and his fundraising needs going into the November election. Doesn't look like there will necessarily be a seat for Bill Clinton, who once was so popular among African Americans that they claimed him as one of their own, only half jokingly, but this week found himself having to deny he's racist for criticizing Obama. He also attracted less than positive publicity in a newspaper in the state where his wife holds a Senate seat. Here's a partial transcript of the interview with Kate Snow of ABC in which he was asked to reflect upon his role in his wife's failed bid to become the Democratic nominee: SNOW: It's been about eight weeks. Your friends tell us that you're angry. CLINTON: I'm not. And I never was mad at Senator Obama. I think, ever. I think everybody's got a right to run for president, who qualifies under the Constitution. And I would be the last person to ever begrudge anybody their ambition. And he is, was a superbly gifted candidate in this election and had a great operation. The only thing I ever got mad about was people in your line of work pretending that she had somehow started the negative stuff. It's a contact sport. SNOW: A lot of people, including your supporters, your donors, say that they blame you, at least in part, for her loss. I know you've heard this. Do you blame yourself at all? CLINTON: No. I've heard it. I've heard it from the press. And I will not comment on this because it interferes with the issue, which is who should be elected in November. I made hundreds and hundreds of speeches, Kate. I bragged on Senator Obama hundreds of times. SNOW: Do you personally have any regrets about what you did campaigning for your wife? CLINTON: Yes, but not what you think. And it would be counterproductive for me to talk about it. So I -- there are things that I wish I'd urged her to do. Things I wish I had said. Things I wish I hadn't said. But I am not a racist. I never made a racist comment. And I didn't attack him personally. SNOW (voice-over): Clinton says he plans to campaign for Obama, though there's nothing on his schedule yet. SNOW (to Clinton): Do you think he's completely qualified to be president? CLINTON: The Constitution sets qualifications for the president. And then the people decide who they think would be the better president. I think we have two choices. I think he should win and I think he will win.It's barstool talk these days to blame Bill for his wife's loss. No less popular is discussion of the public debate Paris Hilton is having with John McCain's campaign over its inclusion of her image in an attack ad it ran against Barack Obama for his celebrity status. The McCain campaign actually responded to her spoof, saying: "Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan." Here's her video:
See Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad and more funny videos on FunnyOrDie.com See more funny videos at Funny or Die You can watch the original McCain ad under the "TV AD: CELEB" tab at www.johnmccain.com Meanwhile Obama is accusing McCain of taking the low road in this ad. Rumors were rife in recent days about when Obama would name his running mate, with much of the attention focusing on Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia. Kaine's easygoing persona, fluent Spanish and Catholic missionary past make him an obvious counterweight to Obama's political persona. He also hails from the south, where Democrats have traditionally fared poorly. Most importantly, he is not a Washington insider, and would bolster Obama's message of change. But he might expose Obama to further accusations he lacks experience. Here he is. July 29 Penniless Democrats? The emails come every few days now, like a warning about the pain you will face in purgatory if you fail to pay your TV licence, or Janis Joplin begging for a Mercedes Benz. Puleez, oh puleez, won't you spare a dime to pay off Hillary Clinton's debts? Here's one of those emails: "Summer is a time for simple pleasures: family vacations, baseball games, and dinner out under the stars. At least it is if you aren't running for president! It's hard to believe, but Clinton lent her defunct campaign another million bucks in June. Meanwhile the Obama campaign, despite having squillions of cash, is auctioning off chances to get behind the scenes with the rock star candidate. Here's an email from his wife: "Barack likes to tell a story about the two of us standing backstage before his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. There's something just a little improbable about the idea that the amounts of money being spent on the respective presidential campaigns are not enough. The theory is that a candidate proves his or her worth by their ability to raise funds. The question is, how will their worth be assessed if they cannot pay off their debts? It's hard to imagine that average Americans will look favourably upon the Democrats when Republican John McCain refuses to accept federal funds for his campaign in return for restricting his fundraising freedom, while Obama rejects said funds in reliance on the likelihood that he will massively outraise McCain from private sources. It's a state of affairs that seems to erode the Democrats' argument that they will defend middle class Americans from the scourge of debt, which results partly from skyrocketing healthcare pricse they say they will curtail and a mortgage crisis that has its roots in high-falluting, muddle-headed budgeting. Unforunately for Clinton, who seems to have little hope of recouping the more than $13 million she has loaned her campaign, the story has moved on. Fortunately for Obama, he is so popular he may not need to care. July 23 Tea and sympathy for John McCain? Poor, lonesome, neglected John McCain. Apparently one reporter and one photographer awaited his arrival on the tarmac of Manchester airport as he touched down for a visit to New Hampshire this week and limped to a waiting car. Meanwhile Barack Obama, youthful and fighting fit, is drawing crowds of reporters on his tour of Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe, accompanied by three network anchors. (In the rather twisted logic of presidential campaigns, it might well serve Obama's cause that a Palestinian bulldozer driver smashed his way through a busy neighbourhood outside his Jerusalem hotel shortly before the Democratic candidate's arrival. Brushes with death, however remote, tend to cement a candidate's national security credentials.) But there is the risk Obama might overdo it. McCain supporters and some independent observers are accusing much of the media of fawning over the Democrat and paying scant attention to his Republican opponent. And the McCain campaign is clearly aware of the problem. While Obama basked in the international limelight like the Global Idol of American politics, McCain's aides resorted to dropping hints he might name his running mate this week in an attempt to draw the media away from more Obama coverage. So the question of the day is, should we feel sorry for McCain? Five reasons why we should1. He's old enough to be Obama's father and has had health problems 2. He is inextricably linked to President Bush, whose approval rating is abysmal 3. He supported the invasion of Iraq, a losing position these days 4. The media paid hardly any attention to his recent foreign tours 5. He gets blamed by association with the party in power for the mortgage crisis and economic woes And five reasons why we shouldn't1. He gets the vote of older Americans who think Obama at 46 is a naive upstart 2. Associates of Bush's father, who hosted McCain at his home in Maine this week, have made extensive efforts to distance foreign policy moderates in the Republican Party from screw-ups in Iraq 3. McCain supported the "surge" before there was one, while Obama is vulnerable because he opposed it even though it is now showing some success in stemming the violence in Iraq 4. As long as the media pays attention to Obama abroad, it spends less time fretting over the economy 5. All this whining about the media is kind of ironic given how much of a free ride they gave the Bush Administration before Iraq went pear-shaped July 16 McCain catches ObamaDemocrats must be scratching their heads and wondering if they offended the political gods in a previous life. After John Kerry's defeat in 2004 and Al Gore's cliffhanger loss to President Bush back in 2000, with the economy stumbling and most of the rest of the world critical of the administration's foreign policy, you would think a Democratic nominee with more historic impact, arguably, than any of his predecessors bar the Kennedys, buckets of cash and a television presence that most commentators agree makes John McCain look like an awkward high school debater, would be miles ahead in the polls. Well, you would be wrong. The war in Iraq, supposedly the great trump card for the Democrats this year, is rapidly losing its pulling power. The candidates' withdrawal strategies sound dramatically different - McCain wants the decision to be driven by facts on the ground while Obama wants to get the troops out within 16 months. That position won Obama lots of points during his prolonged battle against Clinton, whose vote to authorize the invasion, a consequence of her presence in the Senate at the time, counted against her. But that argument seems not to be working so well for Obama now. Perhaps that's because the Iraqis themselves are talking up a withdrawal timetable and violence is ebbing. Or because McCain's charges Obama is a flip-flopper are sticking as the Democrat moves to the centre so he doesn't sound too doveish for all those independent voters he needs to win. Which means, as usual, that it's the economy, stupid, and guess what? Obama has some work to do there with voters as you'll see in this article. Then again, as any diplomat in Washington with expertise on Afghanistan will tell you, the situation there is fast shaping up to make Iraq look like a picnic. That might explain why the National Security Network, a Democratic organization, sent some heavyweights into the ring today to refute McCain's position there. Richard Holbrooke, the former UN Ambassador and chief architect of Bosnia's peace deal, Larry Korb, a former assistant secretary of defence and tough critic of the Iraq war and Rand Beers, a former civil servant and Marine who ran counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics from 1988 to 1998 ("drugs and thugs" as that area of foreign policy expertise is known here) are preparing to blast McCain for recent comments on Afghanistan as I write. I don't have a crystal ball but I'm prepared to bet my car that they'll refute the following line from a McCain campaign speech in Albuquerque, New Mexico, July 15. "Senator Obama will tell you we can't win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq." What he meant of course was that Obama's withdrawal timetable amounts to a defeat, a pretty damaging accusation to level at someone planning to assume command of U.S. forces. Update: wondering what Hillary Clinton is up to? Read this posting explaining that she is trying to keep donations for her next Senate campaign. Now for some light relief, those satirists over at JibJab media have a hilarious new video you can upload yourself here. July 09 Race, immigration plague ObamaAs of now, 135,746 people have watched the July 8 YouTube video below of Barack Obama arguing American children should learn to speak Spanish. That's roughly double the number when I looked at it a few hours ago. Judging by the comments, most of the viewers seemed to be fuming unprintably, especially since the only foreign phrase Obama himself managed to utter in the clip was in French - merci beaucoup - though as you'll hear, he was poking fun at the expense of Americans in general who are not always known for their prowess when it comes to foreign languages. Speaking of foul language, former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, who failed to become the nominee in 1984, was all over the news today after an open microphone picked up his whisper to a fellow African American interviewee that he wanted to castrate Obama for "talking down" to black people with his appeal to faith-based initiatives, a subject I wrote about last week. Jackson's beef as the deeply contrite reverend later explained, more or less, was that he would rather see African Americans benefit from economic or urban reforms instead of being told to get religion and get over it. Obama's campaign said it accepted Jackson's apology. The same cannot be said for his son, a member of Congress and active campaigner on Obama's behalf, like his father. "I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric," Jackson Jr. said in a statement. "He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself." It seems unlikely Jackson Senior's comments will hurt Obama, given his popularity in the African American community. They more constitute an airing of dirty laundry within the broader church of the Democratic movement, particularly between the generation represented by Jackson Senior, a peer of Martin Luther King, and Obama, who was born after segregation officially ended. It almost sounded as if Jackson was reminding the younger Obama of his political roots with the preamble to his public apology at a news conference. Jackson pointed out the historical poetry that Obama's nomination would be announced on August 28, exactly 45 years after King delivered his "I have a dream" speech, and exactly 53 years after the lynching of 14-year-old Emmitt Till, whose assassins, supposedly angered that he whistled at a white girl, were pronounced innocent by an all-male, all-white jury in just 67 minutes, but later confessed and ultimately were ostracised by their white neighbours. Obama's appeal extends well beyond the African American community, and well beyond America's shores. His popularity abroad is a double-edged sword, a fact that was evident in the comments on his appeal to Americans to teach their children Spanish. One asked ironically whether Obama's issue was just that "we are bad bad bad people because we are American." Another asked sarcastically if he was planning to learn German so he could say "Ich bin ein Berliner" just as fluently as John F. Kennedy did when he visits Berlin later this month, given that, like Kennedy, he may speak at the Brandenburg Gate, if German politicians ever agree to let him. Here's Kennedy with his Ich bin ein Berliner speech of 1963.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Invite as friend
